Here an example page from the 20 Year Plan worksheet:

In 20 Years, I Will… Show Notes

Hello everybody. Anton Kraly here. And welcome to another episode of The eCommerce Lifestyle podcast. Coming to you today live on a Wednesday morning. Hope everyone is doing well. Hope everyone is accomplishing a lot this week and feeling good about business and in life.

In this episode or this podcast or whatever you want to call it, I wanted to talk about something that I started doing this weekend, or that I did this weekend, I should say, that I literally have never done before in my entire life and honestly never put any thought into. I created a 20 year plan to help me think clearer and to make better business decisions. So it’s something I wanted to share with you, because maybe it’s something that you can implement in your own life in your own business to help you make better, more focused decisions as well.

Basically what I did is put together a 20 year plan. And that might sound crazy, but it’s really not that detailed. All I did was choose a few different categories of life and choose places I wanted to be in those categories. And I just wrote them out 20 years from now. And kind of worked backwards from there.

Why I’m Creating a 20 Year Plan

The reason I’ve never focused on this before or honestly again, never thought about it, is because now, in 2018, I’m a 33 year old guy, been pretty much single my whole life. I got married a couple years ago. Very happily married, but … now I have a baby as well, so obviously in the last few years, things have really changed. And between getting married and having a baby. But before that, I just kind of, again, did whatever I wanted and didn’t really have to plan for anything.

I’m not a long term planner. But now that I have a family and want to grow my family and just want to, I guess, I don’t want to say have more security, because that’s not really the issue, but having more of something that, when my kids get older, my kid at this point, they can feel secure knowing things like we have a home and knowing things that we’re working towards certain goals.

Developing a 20 Year Life Plan

So I put together three different categories for myself in my 20 year plan. And the first was regarding finances. And within finances, I put together the net worth that I want to be at, the annual income that I want to have and how much cash I want to have liquid. So again, that was the first one. It is all financial. Again, net worth, for myself and my businesses, because businesses are obviously part of my net worth, the value of my businesses. My income and then how much cash I want to have liquid. So something you can think about as well.

The next thing that I have that I planned for in my 20 year plan, what type of properties I want to own. At this point, I’ve still never owned a property in my life. Again, I travel very, very frequently. I’ve lived abroad for probably close to half of my adult life. And never saw a need to put money into any form of real estate. And I’m probably going to stay that way for most of the next 20 years, but I do want to have a couple primary residences.

One, being for me a penthouse in New York on Central Park, because that’s just something that I’ve always wanted and something that I will have within 20 years and something I’ll probably have for the rest of my life as a place to visit and stay out when I’m in New York. And then also, I want to own a home, larger home in Italy. So something that honestly I’ve never really thought about or started looking into until this weekend to think when over the next 20 years, does it make sense to invest into this property in Italy.

Those were a few things that I worked on to include in this 20 year plan. Another section that I think is super important to think about for the long term, if you want to get there is, where you want to be with your relationships and that could be, if you’re single now, do you want to be married, do you want to have kids?

Knowing your 20 year plan and kind of seeing into the future of where you want to be so you can plan for it now. And what was really helpful for me as I was going through these things is specifically with business, making decisions now that are going to allow basically things to grow and to compound over the next 20 years.

And what helps with doing that is it forces you to not think as much about the short term. Not think about as much as how many sales can I get this week or what new thing can I try that’s going to get me as much money as possible in the next 30 days, but more about how can I structure to grow my businesses, my sales funnels, my product offerings, my messaging to the market.

Just everything, so that people that are with you now and people that find you now are going to be with you in 5 years and 10 years and 20 years that will help you ultimately get to the net worth you want and the income you want. Which can then finance things like the homes you want, the investments you want to make, how much do you want to have in different markets, if any. Could also help with relationships, because if part of your plan, maybe you want to have four to six children and you want to have all the time in the world to spend with them and raise them yourself without needing a bunch of nannies and help, well then you’re going to have to plan for a business that can pretty much sustain itself. Right.

I started with those things, those longer term goals and then I literally went into a Google Sheet, went 20 rows down, put the numbers that I have for my 20 years, and then worked backwards from there.

And then started to think, okay, with the real estate investments. I actually have a number in my head, as far as how much I’m willing to invest into real estate. And not going to share that now, because whatever, it’s not relevant, anyone can have their own numbers. But for that, I basically said okay, this is the number that I think the real estate is going to cost, my penthouse apartment in Manhattan in 20 years and I’m not just going to go, my plan is not to obviously buy it 20 years from now, but my plan is also not to buy it five years from now.

Strategic Life Planning

I’m probably, in the next few years, going to buy something more modest. Maybe like a three bedroom condo, maybe in midtown. And that will be my first investment. And then maybe five years after I buy that, I will sell that and roll the money into that penthouse on Central Park. Or maybe I’ll roll it into another investment property. And so on and so on.

What’s cool again, about the 20 year thing is it does force you to think long term. And what’s really helpful about it. If you listened to an episode I did, I don’t even know when, maybe four or five back, I talked about the concept of just crossing things off and eliminating different things in your life and your business that aren’t really providing you results. Well, now that I have my 20 year plan and now that you can set up your 20 year plan as well, it’s going to allow you to eliminate even more and to add in things that actually do matter for the long term.

Again, all that short term thinking stuff that’s popping into your head now, you don’t have to worry about it anymore and it allows you to say no to a lot more, call it opportunities or just call it, I don’t even know, mind filling tasks. Right.

I’ll give you an example. The net worth that I want for myself and my family in 20 years is very, it’s high. It’s high by any standards. So in order to get there, instead of just thinking, okay I’m comfortable making, whatever, a few million dollars 20 years from now, I’m not, it’s going to be a lot more than that.

That means I’m not going to get myself involved in business opportunities now that only have the opportunity to make six figures a month. I want ones that are going much higher than that, in terms of revenue and opportunity, because again, if I’m going to get to the properties that I want to own, if I’m going to be able to afford them comfortably, only spending a small percentage of my income and if my net worth is going to be where I want it to be, then I can’t focus on these small businesses that just won’t provide what I need to get to my goals.

How to Write a 20 Year Plan

So one thing I will say as a little disclaimer or side note on that, if you are listening to this and you’re brand new to business, then you do have to say yes to more things. Like when I started, if I just had that mentality, like when I started my first business 12 years ago, if I was like, well I know my net worth in 20 years is going to be x amount of dollars, because that’s my goal. And then if I said no to all the things that I needed to do to get started, I wouldn’t be where I am today.

Once you do have success, once you do have a bank roll, once you have money in the bank and a safety net and once you have something proven to produce cash and once you’re comfortable, then you can actually start saying no to more things, again crossing things off and focusing on what’s going to get you to your goals.

It did help me and I guess there’s a time and a place for this. And if it makes sense for you, I would highly recommend doing it. Because I’ll tell you, I did this Saturday, I was on my computer for a few hours, again mapping out these different things in life that I want. You could think of it almost like a vision board, which I know is a strange concept, like vision boards and the whole law of attraction thing.

I don’t believe that if you put a message out into the universe, the universe just gives it back to you. But I 1,000% believe that if you know what you want out of life and if you look at it every day, it reminds you of what you have to do to get there.

I would say to do it just for that alone. If you’re looking at your targets every day, every year, then you know what you have to do to get there. And again, it will help you make those decisions, which make it just so much more possible for you to be where you want to be, whether that be in your business, with your personal finances and investments, with your relationships, with your family and friends. It all starts with knowing what you want. And prior to this weekend, I was thinking in one year chunks to quarterly to weekly. And now I’m definitely planning for the long term with this 20 year plan.

Something I would recommend. If you guys are interested, you want to see the worksheets I put together, that I’ve been using, let me know. Go to eCommerceLifestyle.com. So just eCommerceLifestyle.com, then click episodes. Look for this one. I think I’m going to call it like, In 20 years. Click that and then leave a comment below, say yeah Anton, can you send me the worksheets. And I’ll send them over to you so you can use them for your own planning as well.

That’s it guys. Hope you found this discussion on developing a 20 year plan useful. I’m at the office now. I’m going to go in and get today started so I can be where I want to be in 20 years. Hope you do the same. See ya everybody.